Like pretty much anybody with a decent connection, I get a kick out of when delusional people manage to p**s off the entire internet. I know, schadenfreude is an unsavory blend, but it's high entertainment.

So there are easy marks, like the "sorority letter", that Scottsdale restaurant, or Charles Carreon. The problem with internet outrage is that it has no memory whatsoever. Everybody is up in arms for the moment, and then a few months later nobody knows what you're talking about.

But there are some stories that just keep on giving.

I'm currently entranced with the saga of the Prenda law firm. If you're not familiar with the story, basically a bunch of lawyers happened upon a shakedown scheme of suing people who supposedly downloaded illicit porn without their okay. I guess that would be bad, except that their porn videos were only ever released by torrent, and they are all lunatics if they think that makes sense. Their entire business model is "if you don't pay us we will tell your loved ones you like porn, but we'll go away for $5000."

A bit shady, and possibly illegal. But it gets so much better. I'm just going to direct you to this Techdirt page that has been keeping up with it.

It's a slow burn, but the twists and turns by this possible criminal enterprise has been one of my favorite reads.

"Just keep digging!"

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Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills, get up and kill.

I always wanted to know what happened to the naked pooping masturbator. I need closure on that story, and everyone else has moved on!

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"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH

I'm following the weird Gupta saga in South Africa where a nation's rules were ignored for a lavish, high profile wedding and the racist guests told the organizers that they only wanted to be served by white people.

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Questions fell but no one stopped to listenThat eternity was just a dawn awayAnd the rest was sure to comeLeaves, caught in winter's ice

If you're not following the case, and why would you, it seems that there has been some pretty damning evidence entered against this guy, John Steele. (My last name is Steele, just for fun.)

So Prenda is a law firm that sues people for pirating porn. Their hope is that people will settle instead of having their names dragged into a porno suit. They make a lot of money doing that.

Here's where it gets funny. The supposedly pirated porn is made available via torrent. Torrents are legally hazy. So legal organizations such as Prenda can step in and file lawsuits for, what?, trumped up bulls**t.

Except John Steele has pretty much been shown to be the person who makes available all the porn videos he represents on sites such as Pirate Bay. After uploading torrents to the Pirate Bay, he then just waits for people to download them so he can file suit against them. Now that would seem a pretty terrible abuse of the currently broken system. I don't think it's technically illegal, but clearly there's nothing above board going on here.

All of this malfeasance is now becoming more and more transparent in the many suits currently on many court dockets.

It's clear that John Steele and Prenda are up to some very shady practices, and that they are going to go down very soon. (Well, hopefully.) But, man, this is some very entertaining stuff.

Logged

Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills, get up and kill.

Except John Steele has pretty much been shown to be the person who makes available all the porn videos he represents on sites such as Pirate Bay. After uploading torrents to the Pirate Bay, he then just waits for people to download them so he can file suit against them. Now that would seem a pretty terrible abuse of the currently broken system. I don't think it's technically illegal, but clearly there's nothing above board going on here.

Without doing any research I'm pretty confident that---if the facts are as you say there are--some legal avenues are open against him. If he is uploading the porn without the company's explicit permission then he's guilty of copyright violation himself. If he did it with the company's permission then that wrecks their case (they condoned the illegal downloading) and that makes the lawsuit frivolous. Abuse of process/malicious use of process or vexatious litigation come to mind as possible torts he would open himself up to. In any case he'd also be liable for ethical sanctions and could be disbarred.

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"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH

Without doing any research I'm pretty confident that---if the facts are as you say there are--some legal avenues are open against him. If he is uploading the porn without the company's explicit permission then he's guilty of copyright violation himself. If he did it with the company's permission then that wrecks their case (they condoned the illegal downloading) and that makes the lawsuit frivolous. Abuse of process/malicious use of process or vexatious litigation come to mind as possible torts he would open himself up to. In any case he'd also be liable for ethical sanctions and could be disbarred.

I just read through the actual filing because it's a pretty interesting look at torrent tracking. Apparently, John Steele was seeding the copyrighted videos on the Pirate Bay before the copyright was actually filed. It may even be that the works are not really commercially available anywhere, and the only place to get them is through torrent. The website where the videos might be found is owned by, you guessed it, John Steele.

And that's only one part of the bizarre legal saga that is Prenda Law.

Logged

Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills. The people it kills, get up and kill.

Without doing any research I'm pretty confident that---if the facts are as you say there are--some legal avenues are open against him. If he is uploading the porn without the company's explicit permission then he's guilty of copyright violation himself. If he did it with the company's permission then that wrecks their case (they condoned the illegal downloading) and that makes the lawsuit frivolous. Abuse of process/malicious use of process or vexatious litigation come to mind as possible torts he would open himself up to. In any case he'd also be liable for ethical sanctions and could be disbarred.

I just read through the actual filing because it's a pretty interesting look at torrent tracking. Apparently, John Steele was seeding the copyrighted videos on the Pirate Bay before the copyright was actually filed. It may even be that the works are not really commercially available anywhere, and the only place to get them is through torrent. The website where the videos might be found is owned by, you guessed it, John Steele.

And that's only one part of the bizarre legal saga that is Prenda Law.

I actually tried to read the forensic evidence but it's the kind of thing I would have to really sit down and study to evaluate--if I can't skim it I'm not reading it for free!

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"The basic plot is that Donna Speir and Hope Marie Carlton, the two undercover DEA agent Playboy Playmates from the last movie, are still running around in jungle shorts, cowboy boots and spaghetti strap T-shirts, firing their machine guns at drug smugglers, Filipino communist guerrillas, and corrupt federal agents while their two friends, Lisa London and Miss May 1984 Patty Duffek, lounge around the pool a lot and talk on speaker phones that look like fax machines."-Joe Bob on SAVAGE BEACH